School days

We have had a few productive weeks of school.  As always, these are just a few shots of some of the work the children do throughout the morning.  I feel like I should carry my camera on my hip, but it becomes quite distracting for them and then they are always wanting me to take pictures of them and not really focusing on their work.  I will be posting a few individual lessons soon, but for now, here are some general pictures from our school days.

 

Nito has been working on the metal insets.  However, he never chooses this work on his own.  I always have to be present with him.  I hope that once he gets the hang of it, he will choose it independently.  It is a great work before handwriting.

When Kui has free time throughout the morning, she always goes to the decimal checkerboard.  It is a good review for her so I let her have at it. 

Nito is showing some growth since the past year.  He is choosing more work independently and will stay focused and concentrated as long as I can keep T-man away from him.  Boy oh boy do those two have some kind of dynamic in the classroom!!

Bubs has been reviewing his clock material.  He was excited that I put the stamps back on the shelf.  It is a nice extension for him since he gets a little discouraged with just the clock material.  He claims that he "can't do it", but when there is a stamp and messy ink, all of a sudden he CAN do it!  I'm just glad he is learning how to draw the arrows on the clock and learning how to tell time the "old fashioned way". 

Kui was reviewing over the parts of a letter.  She did quite a bit of letter writing last year, but I made a quick material for her by cutting up the parts of a letter and having her label them.  For example, the labels are heading, greeting, body, closing, and signature.  She made sure to tell me that this was very easy and that she knew all the parts.  So we will clearly move away from that and on to something more challenging.

 

Bubs did some land and water forms review which I was pleasantly surprised with.  I had spent time at the end of last year making some nice booklets for this work and then he never took it off of the shelf again.  He enjoyed talking about the names and it is a great practical life exercise for pouring.  He has to make sure that water line is exactly to the top of the form.  (Don't mind the non color-coded material you see there.  We couldn't find our metal bucket so he grabbed the bucket from table washing.  He is old enough now though that the colors don't really matter.)

 

 

Nito and I spent some time making this interesting tower.  I had seen this picture on a Montessori school website last year sometime, but never got around to making it.  It took us three tries, but we did it! (Oh actually it took us two, but then Nito ran by it in excitement right before I snapped the picture and it fell over!  So we built it again).  It includes three works from primary: the pink tower, the brown, stairs, and the red rods. 

Bubs was finally presented the subtraction strip board.  I will write up an individual post about this once he has gone through all of the presentations.  He really enjoyed this work.

Nito doing some shoe polishing. 

I sort of gave up on my fantasy of having art lessons on Friday afternoon so I just plopped our art book in front of Kui the other day and told her to read the lesson and do the work independently.  She was working on a watercolor wash and studied the Limbourg brothers.  I have come to terms with (well sort of) my limitations on the variety of subjects we can get to in a given week or month.  Art and music will just have to take a back seat for now.  Kui does piano lessons weekly and is in the choir at church with a great teacher so I feel like she is getting something.  As for art, it is hit or miss.  Two years ago I paid someone to come do a weekly hour and a half lesson with her for art, but it just became too time consuming and costly. 

 

 

I didn't grab any shots of T-man, but he does work every so often at his table.  I have sort of let him roam around more freely this year so far because it is just hard for me to keep bending over, sitting on the floor, etc. with him.  Our baby will be due in a few weeks so I will try to get to some toddler presentations after the baby has come.  Kui does work with him in the mornings when she wants a break from her work and this is very helpful.